Elijah Blue Allman, Cher's Son, Talks About Using Heroin at Age 11

Elijah Blue Allman, Cher's musician son with ex-husband Gregg Allman, opened up in a new interview this week about how he felt shunned as a child and turned to drugs for comfort when he was just 11 years old.

"When you go to boarding school at 7 years old, it's kind of hard to feel like you're not being shunned," the 37-year-old told Entertainment Tonight. "So I would come home on the weekend and me and my friends would go up to Harlem and get into all kinds of trouble. It's actually shocking to think about myself at like 11 years old buying drugs in Harlem. It's pretty crazy. It seemed normal at the time."

Allman, who's been sober since 2008, said he battled a nasty heroin addiction for many years.

"I [was] just looking to escape all the things in my past and, that's when you turn to those kind of drugs, you know heroin and opiates," he said. "[Heroin] kind of saved me . . . If I didn't have that at that point, I don't know what I would have done . . . You may jump off a bridge. If you can only just go through that time period and live through it and then get help."

Since serving as the frontman for the rock band Deadsy in the '90s, Allman has produced a solo album and dabbled in contemporary art. He recently married longtime girlfriend Marieangela King.

He said his relationship with his mother has been strained for months ever since he and King tried living with her last year.

"In due time I'm sure [a reconciliation] has to happen," he told ET. "Anything like that always has to happen at an organic pace, so for me right now the priority in my life is just kind of coming back to the land of the living."